Posts Tagged ‘mobile’

Editor’s note: This post was written by Alice McGlinn, who has been a tech nerd since receiving her first computer ten years ago. Since then, she’s been spending her time learning and writing about all things technology.

According to the Pew Research Internet Project, 56 percent of all adults in the U.S. own a smartphone, and the number is even higher for 20 to 30-year-olds. This is the first time since the Pew Research Center started watching smartphone trends that the majority of American adults use smartphones. Although most businesses these days have a website to represent their product or service, many of them are not mobile device-ready. Nothing will send your visitors away faster than a website that isn’t usable on a smartphone or tablet.

As the mobile world goes, so goes the world of marketing. Recent data only serve to underscore this point. Statistics from Pew, for example, put mobile device usage in the United States at about 200 million people. And of these cellular, smartphone and tablet users, a healthy 74% rely on their devices for web browsing and news updates in real time. Of course, the modern marketer is likely well aware of this fact and has a concomitant strategy to help boost that return on investment. As for those who don’t already have a mobile plan of attack in place… well, it’s now do or die time.

The other day, I was reading an entry here about how to make your blog mobile friendly, and the last thing the writer mentioned is a blog concept that I personally advocate, that of responsive design. If you are unfamiliar with responsive design, essentially it is designing your website so that it automatically adjusts to fit the screen of most mobile users. While I personally advocate responsive design, I understand that it is not for everyone. Today, we will take a look at some of the pros and cons of using responsive design for your blog or website. Read More

You’ve done the hard bit, your blog is set up and you’ve even managed to reach a decent number of regular visitors, but who’s happy with decent these days? If you want your blog to achieve more, you need to make sure you’re reaching as big of an audience as possible, and today that means one thing: mobile.

Making your blog mobile friendly isn’t as difficult as you may think, whether it’s self-hosted or not. By following a few simple tips, your killer content can be seen and appreciated on devices big and small. Read More

To be honest, last week was a pretty rough week for the city of New Orleans. The landfall of Hurricane Isaac bringing powerful winds, heavy rains and strong storm surge to the area, the city was, to put it simply, a disaster.

While it may not have been a catastrophe on par with Hurricane Katrina seven years ago, it was still a powerful storm and one that more people stayed for due to fact it wasn’t seen to be as great of a threat.

What resulted was a city roasting in a hot bayou summer without power, A/C or even adequate ice. Couple that with flooding issues around the city itself and an emergency response that was seen as less-than-swift, the city felt like a disaster zone, perhaps more than it actually was.

But in the middle of it all, I realized that my work as a blogger was serving me remarkably well during these trying days. When one usually thinks of disaster skills, they typically think of survivalists capable of living off of the land.

However, disasters, even extreme ones, don’t unfold the same way in the digital age as ones just a few years ago. Your skills with Google may be more useful than knowing how to desalinate water and, if you’re a blogger, you likely have many of the skills needed to help make any disaster more bearable and more survivable.

WordPress have realeased the latest version (V1.3.8) of the blogging platform for the Android Market, which has addressed a wide range of issues that have been raised by users.

You can now choose what the post status (Draft, Pending Review, Private or Publish) whilst editing or writing

They’ve also addressed a wide range of bugs:
* Fixed crash when adding media on Dell Streak
* Fixed crash when attempting to add a self-hosted site with an invalid blog URL
* Fixed local db problem when upgrading from a 1.0.x or 1.1.x version
* Updated Polish translation strings
* Fixed crash when trying to add a second blog from a WordPress.com account or WordPress multi-user install
* Fixed no-name blogs from showing as blank in the multi-user blog selection screen
* Comments Loading progress bar no longer hang

While many bloggers are quick to make their sites compatibleÂ across various internet browsers, only a small fraction are making their sites viewable upon mobile devices (both for smart phones and feature phones).

Although many smartphones today are equipped with “full featured” browsers, users may loathe reading your site on a tiny screen (which could translate into them visiting your rival).

Whether you host your site upon your own server or use an inexpensive platform, here are a few ways bloggers can make their site mobile friendly (at least upon WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger and Live Journal). Read More

WordPress has recently released an open source app for managing WordPress-powered blogs via the iPhone. Dubbed WordPress for iPhone, the application can manage both WordPress.com blogs and self-hosted WP blogs.

Introducing the first Open Source app that lets you write posts, upload photos, and edit your WordPress blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch. With support for both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress (2.5.1 or higher), users of all experience levels can get going in seconds.

I don’t have an iPhone, so I cannot check it out for myself, though. Has anyone tried this new app? I use a Nokia E51 running Symbian Series 60 version 3. While there are various standalone applications that I can use to manage my WordPress-powered blogs, I usually prefer to just open the admin panel using the built-in browser. Somehow I feel it’s faster that way. I wonder which gives the better user experience in managing blogs–the WP app, or the iPhone’s built in Safari browser.